Narayanan, I worked for a medical device company that built its business through global distributors and as the company grew it made the decision to cut out distributors and use a direct sales force. The company now has sales of $6 Billion. Regardless of what your company ethics are there are plenty of examples of companies cutting out distributors once the distributors have built their own sales force and customer base.
What you are trying to do fits the Microsoft business model using VAR's that typically add value and sales are reported to MS for licensing issues. If you have distributors that add significant value to your product they may not feel threatened but if you are selling commodity products it is another issue. Good luck. David Frenkel ________________________________ From: Narayanan Bharadwaj <[email protected]> To: edi list <[email protected]> Sent: Fri, October 7, 2011 6:21:53 PM Subject: [EDI-L] End customer info Hi all, we are proposing a new change in our POS (867) message and asking our distributors to report the "end customer" info to whom they are selling the goods. One of the concerns that our team is facing with South America distributors (may be it is the same in ASIA too) is that "what if you go and reach out to these end customers and make them your direct partners, by bypassing us". I know this is not a pure EDI question per say, but more of a business/process related type of question. But because it is linked to EDI 867, I thought of getting some inputs from the group. Can you please share any thoughts around: * How do you assure the distributors about your business ethics? * How can we encourage the distys to report this info, without any worries of foul play?? * Are there any best practices/compliance enforcements that we can use to over come this situation? Thanks in advance for your comments. Have a good weekend!!! NB [Non-text portions of this message have been removed] [Non-text portions of this message have been removed] ------------------------------------ ... Please use the following Message Identifiers as your subject prefix: <SALES>, <JOBS>, <LIST>, <TECH>, <MISC>, <EVENT>, <OFF-TOPIC> Job postings are welcome, but for job postings or requests for work: <JOBS> IS REQUIRED in the subject line as a prefix.Yahoo! Groups Links <*> To visit your group on the web, go to: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/EDI-L/ <*> Your email settings: Individual Email | Traditional <*> To change settings online go to: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/EDI-L/join (Yahoo! ID required) <*> To change settings via email: [email protected] [email protected] <*> To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to: [email protected] <*> Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to: http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/
